FRENCH WORD-A-DAY

Being a farm boy and the only son, I stayed on the farm as was expected. At 24, I was drafted into the Korean War and was assigned to NATO in France. After the service, I returned to the farm, but quit at age 30.

In the following 2 ½ years I got an electronics engineering degree, got married at age 32 and moved to Arizona. We bought a house (payments - $115/mo) 2 months later. Life was simpler then!

Sharron and I recently celebrated 50 years together!

Left home at 17 for college in Toronto and was so homesick.....but couldn't,go home because they had thrown a bon voyage party for me.by Xmas of that year came home and couldn't,t wait to get back to Toronto, thought home had become so small!!!!
Moved back home after 5years in Toronto and have been travelling ever since.my first job paid $6000.a yr and think I could do more with the $6000.than I did with my $85000.00 some 40yrs later when I retired!!!!!!

I was on my own at 19 to attend a college of which my folks didn't approve. I was also just married. My wife and I found a basement apartment for the princely sum of $16/week (yes, quite a while ago, in the late 60s in Michigan). We lived there for several months before we upgraded to sharing a house with two other students.

It was the first time I was truly "on my own" with no parental safety net. College tuition and my loans were completely on me as I'd applied as an independent student. Rent, utilities, food, and everything else were on my wife and me. Looking back, all we had was our optimism and commitment that we'd have a better life following school. Most of it all turned out quite well... except for the marriage. But my 2nd wife and I have just celebrated our 28th year of marriage, so it seems like there's value in not giving up .

Hi Kristin, loved your post today. Definitely in Canada, kids are staying home longer, or returning home more, than they did when I was young.
I left home at 18, moved in with my brother, my best friend and my boyfriend :O) into an apartment that was about $6-800/mo back then, in the 80s. It was a large building with a pool, that I don't think I ever used. We (my boyfriend and I) then got our own apartment, and subsequently got married 2 years later. We're still together, 30 yrs in August.
My kids took their first 2 years of college from home, and then moved out for their university years. So far neither has come back. I think it's because my husband has taken over the cooking. ;O)

I was 18 when I left home and moved in with my boyfriend. This was very daring in 1970 and only happened because my parents didn't like him and gave me an ultimatum: him or them. We had a 1 bedroom apartment in a low-rent district because I was a student and he had just graduated from college. We stayed together for 3 more years! And, no, I didn't return to my parents' house when we broke up. It was understood that once we moved out we were welcome to visit but not reside. And I did reconcile with my parents after the break-up. I don't regret a minute of it.

Went away at 17 to college. Came home at 18 for college. Left again at 20. Worked, went to Europe for 6 months at 25. Followed boyfriend to Oregon, came home at 27. Lived with parents, then sister for 3 months. Rented house, bought same house at 34. From college to now I have had OMG.....over 20 roomates, some doing more than one stint here and that does not include the brother, girlfriend, dog and fish staying for 5 months. In the beginning I needed them to help pay half the mortage. They got half a house for that. I haven't had any real roomates for probably close to 20 years. And it is not over....my nephew will be staying with me with dog for a month because his mother did a house swap in Colorado. He is home because he can't find work in Oregon where he lives, but can here. My place just always seemed to be the home where friends could come until they moved on to the next phase of thier lives. So, I guess I have provided a safe haven for many over the years. Some stayed a week, others a couple of months.
I can't remember how much I made in my first real job. (Not counting swim instructor and lifeguard.) It was not much, but I can remember telling my parents how proud I felt to be able to pay my own bills.
So if anyone needs a place to stay here....sorry, I am booked for the next month;)

I was 18 - I moved to a furnished "single", utilities included, in west Hollywood that costs $85 (!!) a month. My dad helped me pay the rent as my step mother wanted my out of their house. My roommate was a pet rat named Mike (after my boyfriend). I never moved back home and married at 22. We're still married (not to Mike) 44 years. :- )

Hi Kristin!
First, thank you-I am happy I was able to provide a topic for today's article-and on a very interesting word, too!
I was out of the house at 15, to boarding school. I never lived at home full time again, being home only during the summer until college, and then I simply stayed at school and worked in the library there. After college, I moved to Boston, sharing an apartment in Newton Center and Newton Upper Falls with at least 2 other roomies at any one time-I seem to remember my part of the rent ran at about $175.00 back then-very cheap for Boston. I volunteered at the French Library, which allowed me to read and speak with other French aficionados. We had our own French language puppet theater there and we had a chorus, as well! Anyway, I remember it all fondly. Wish it was so easy to keep up my speech today-the reading is easy!
Alyssa

It was hardly a home of my own. It was the dorm/suite at college shared with four other girls. My parents gave me $200/month and it covered everything(books, room and board, tuition) including flights home. Of course this was 1965. Things have changed!! But I loved it.

The window sounds lovely. Fire dogs - that is a new one. Happy day, Nancy

Hi Kristin! I left home to go to university when I was 18yrs. old. I chose a school two time zones away from home, and I was miserably homesick the whole first term. I lived in residence as all first year students were required to do and had a roommate who is still a friend. After second year, I shared an apartment with three other friends. I cannot remember how much the rent was, but I do remember that we all chipped in $5 per week or $20 US per month for food. However, this was in 1965-1968. I think that our last year together we all had to put in a bit more as food prices were a bit higher. We had the very best time together and are still in contact. We've had a couple of "roomie reunions" and are planning another for this year. I did go home to live with my parents for 6 months and the experience wasn't so positive. My parents and I stayed on good terms, but I learned that it's good to go home to visit but not to live there again. You know that expression, "You can never go home again"? For me, that was true. Once out of the nest, I didn't want to go back.

Let's just say that I walked in cap and gown across our high school graduation stage with my left hand holding my SUITCASE and my right hand reaching out for the SET ME FREE! WHOOOheeee- diploma! I couldn't get out of my home/hometown fast enough! Was living in Charlotte 2 weeks later. First home was a 2 bedroom/1bath apt with three girls. 1965 -broke, dumb and happy. 2013 -1965 = 48 yrs ago...egads!!!

My two children (now 32 and 28) left home to go to college and have never returned to live in our home. One lives in Seattle and the other in NYC. I miss sharing their daily lives but I'm happy for them--they have created their own wonderful homes.

I too left home to go to college. After college, I returned home to earn money for six months and then left to travel and work in Finland, the USSR and Europe. Then, after one month at home, I left home for good,going to flight attendant training in Miami and then moving to New York City to fly for Pan Am. My two roommates and I each paid $300/mo to sublet a 3-bedroom apartment with tall windows on the second floor of a brownstone 1.5 blocks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. (We found this apartment through the New York Times classified ads 2 hours after landing in NYC.) Needless to say, we were very lucky. While I wouldn't choose to live on the Upper East Side now (even if I could afford it), it was a relatively safe place for 2 naive Westerners and a young Frenchwoman to live in 1970-1972, when New York City was very different than it is now.

Quit college at 19 during junior year to marry. Returned home at age 20 after marriage failed. My father read the want ads to me at breakfast every morning and I got a job. Paid $10 a week rent to parents. Married again at 22 to the great joy of my parents, who had visions of being stuck with me. Second time around, love was definitely lovelier and lasted 53 years until husband passed away.

I had friends who moved back home after moving out, and I was determined not to do that. So to my parents' extreme dismay, I quit college to save up (I REALLY wanted to move out!).

I was 21 when I moved to an apartment, on my own, no roommate. Rent was $285, my monthly salary was $650. But I soon got a new job paying $900/mo. I thought I was rich! Then I went back to school and had no money again. My parents' were so relieved when I eventually graduated.

I LOVED living on my own, but when I returned to school a year later, I had to get a roommate. (I could write a book on my roommate horror stories.) My favorite feature was building's swimming pool, which I used often, especially since the apts. weren't air-conditioned. That part was miserable during the sweltering So. Cal. summers. But that was minor compared with the benefits of having my own apt. It was a mish-mash of borrowed and cast-off furniture. I laugh when I think of the dreadful couch. But I loved every minute. Plus, I made friends with the woman next door, who is still a dear friend today.

I never moved back home, but I'm afraid my kids might. (My son is 21 and my daughter is almost 18.) Living on your own is so much more expensive now! Thanks for letting me take a little trip down memory lane.

Hi Kristine, wonderful post!
I guess The Urban Dictionary is confused a bit, Tanguy's definition has nothing to do with Canada though. There is a hilarious French comedy Tanguy with Sabine Azema and a main character (her son) named Tanguy who perfectly fits the KIPPERS description and probably coined the Tanguy syndrome name.

I moved out at 18 as a full time student then switched to a correspondence course to work and be independent. I've got my PhD anyway.
When my firstborn son left the nest at 17, the first year was euphoric for him and absolutely dreadful for me. He is 21 now and pretty much independent already. But I can't imagine the time when my pre-teen grows up and leave the nest. I know, I know... but unbearable still.

I lived with my mother and grandmother for a year after I finished college, to save money, but I paid real rent, although I didn't pay extra for phone or laundry. I moved out when I was not quite 23 years old, into a one-bedroom apartment by myself. It was a nice place and included access to a small swimming pool in the summer. It had no dishwasher, but did have a large walk-in closet. My uncle co-signed the loan I'd gotten to buy a little furniture; most of what I had was hand-me-downs. My rent was $160 the first year, which sounds like so little now, but on a salary of about $7,000 a year, it seemed high enough. I also had moved right around the time of the wage-price freeze invoked by President Nixon, so I'd just doubled my expenses on the same salary, including the furniture loan, a car loan, and a student loan. I ate at Mom's at least once a week so I could get a bit of free food, read to my grandmother, and watch TV (I had neither a TV nor a record player, only a radio).

The above sounds very Spartan, but it was good training for later. I didn't earn enough to qualify for a credit card (MasterCard and Visa were very new at the time), and the only one I had was Exxon.

I never moved back home, even when unemployed. Nor did I ever borrow from my parents (who didn't have a lot to spare, anyway).

I think it is much harder for young people to move out today, both because some costs exist which didn't then (you pretty much have to have Internet, a computer, and a cell phone, none free - even TV costs money now), and because RENT in particular is just astronomical. And jobs, particularly full-time jobs, let alone positions with benefits, are hard to find. My son is 21, works part-time at a minimum-wage job, and will probably be living with me for at least 2 more years; he couldn't possibly live on his own, and maybe not with a roommate, either; no apartment would rent to someone who earns so little. It's a different world. Even if my son could move out, I'd still be providing his health insurance, which is usually not available to part-timers, and not really affordable to many young full-timers. I hope it will be easier for Max and Jackie than many American youth. Yet I remind myself and my son often that we have all we NEED, which is what matters.

I left a note on the dining room table explaining that I could not fit in with the Houston, Texas society life I grew up in and that I was headed for Berkeley!! Then I left with three friends in the middle of the night and headed west toward the U of Berkeley and the magic, pain and glory of the sixties-seventies revolutions. I never looked back. (Well, I did not cut off my family, but it was a shock to them, that's for sure; but think about this: it was their upbringing that gave me adventursome spirit and a wish to be only myself and follow dreams. As Peanut's Schultz says, "Be yourself--all the rest are taken."

Tanguy, from the eponymous 2001 film, is a 28 year old who lives at home with his parents who wish their nest were finally empty! A fun film to watch and practice French at the same time!

I left home when I married one month after college at age 21. My only roommates were those I shared with in college dorms.

Our first home was one side of a duplex and the rent was probably about $75 a month. ? I remember it had a fireplace which we never had when I was growing up. It also had a "guest bed" that resided inside a closet in the dining room, of all places!

My older daughter bounced home from college due to health issues. We didn't charge rent, but made it clear that she was to return to college and finish when things were under control again. She graduated in 2010, and moved out that fall. Recently she admitted "I have learned that 'being an independent adult' is more restrictive than I had imagined." Time and money are both limiting factors, of course, when you have to travel to a laundromat and cook EVERY DAY! Although she did take a turn at cooking when she was at home. She has a roommate; their rent is more than our (four bedrooms, 2.5 baths) mortgage! It's good to see her when she comes here (1.5 hour drive), and yet we're glad she's not a constant presence.

I live in Quebc and I laughed so much when I saw that you referred to the Tanguy expression that originated in Quebec. It is so common that no one would even question what it means, even if you don't know the TV character. We also use it to describe those adult children who live at home and expect their parents to do all the washing and cleaning. And yes, I have accused my children of being Tanguys ....

I truly enjoyed the playfulness of your post! You had a great mix of life episodes with french language to match. Tres amusant! But.... have you put un grand projet on the backburner?
It will all come together, as you are writing and entertaining and that mix lasts an eternity!

Having been raised by my grandparents (they raised 12 children and then 3 of us). My grandmother died when I was 10 and my grandfather when I was a Senior in HS. I left home at 18, moving from near Brownsburg, Indiana to Temple Terrace, Florida to attend a 2 yr Jr college there, transferred to Western KY U, in Bowling Green, KY to finish my studies (beautiful campus btw). At both colleges, I lived in dormitories. But my first apartment move was in Bowling Green, after graduation. I moved in with a friend from church, Becky, into an old house near campus. We each paid $62.50 per month for this run down, drafty apartment, lol. I didn't even have a bed, I slept on the carpeted floor upstairs. But, it was fun, we shared cooking & cleaning chores. Becky was from South Africa, so there were lots of fascinating stories for me to hear and new foods to experience when it was her turn to cook. I also got my first car while living here, a yellow Ford Pinto that lived up to its color, unfortunately, lol. The shocks were bad, so it bounced around town. Becky didn't know how to drive, so she bought a new used car and we took a "training" trip to the Smokey Mountains. Picture me in the curvy roads of the park, yelling at Becky to drive on the "right" side of the road (she was used to the left side in S Africa)! I'm ever so grateful I survived the trip!